“Kuana, the last I heard,” Buh Tedn replied. “Ja Babbuh and Oya Buh are somewhere in the west. Prince Toron has disappeared completely. Hah Babbuh and Emsul are supposed to be in the northern part of the Okarze Mountains. Kamel Bar-Sarkar has gone over to Yuri. I am here. That about completes the list of our former leaders.”
“Hah Babbuh is in charge of my unarmed forces one hundred and sixty stads north of here,” Cabot answered. “Emsul is on his way to Yuri under crossed sticks. I am here in a plane, with one rifle, Nan-nan the cleric, and six unarmed sharpshooters.”
“What is the idea?” Tedn asked.
“The idea is to fly to Kuana to-night,” the earth-man replied, “and raise as much rough-house as possible for Prince Yuri. Will you come with us? There is one vacant place in the plane.”
The Cupian looked at him admiringly, and said: “You are still the same old Myles Cabot! You propose to capture Kuana practically without arms and single-handed. And the joke is that you will probably succeed. How do you do it?”
“It’s a gift!” Myles laughed. “But ‘trees have antennae’, as Poblath would say. Let us proceed to the plane and wait for evening.”
At the plane, Cabot awakened one of the Cupians to take his place on guard. Then, in low tones, he and Buh Tedn each related to the other all that had occurred since the matter-transmitting apparatus had shot the radio man earthward.
Along toward night the absentees returned from the village, bringing provision, but scarcely any news except that the place was seething with suppressed excitement, and that they had succeeded in getting into the radio station and “pying” the apparatus.
“Let us start then at once,” Buh Tedn counseled. “No one can now get word to Yuri, and perhaps they will mistake us for a Hymernian, anyhow.”
But impatient as he was, Myles would hear none of this.